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The Windows Task Manager shows you the total network usage for your entire computer, but it doesn’t allow you to monitor specific programs. To find out what programs are accessing the Internet and determine the download and upload bandwidth, use the Resource Monitor utility included with Windows. With the Resource Monitor, you can pin down the applications slowing down your Internet connection or just keep tabs on what’s using the connection.

Read the Processes With Network Activity section at the top of the window to view the programs accessing the Internet. Each program’s file name appears in the Image column -- for example, “Chrome.exe” is the Google Chrome Web browser. Each program’s network usage appears in the corresponding Send, Receive and Total columns.

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Expand the Network Activity section by clicking it if you want to see more detailed information. This section shows you the IP addresses each program is currently connected to in the Address column.

Tips

Sort the list of programs alphabetically by file name by clicking the “Image” column at the top of the list. You can also click the other columns to sort by network usage.

If you’re not sure what a process is, right-click it in the Processes With Network Activity section and select “Search Online.”

You can terminate a program by right-clicking it in the Processes With Network Activity section and clicking “End Process.”

The “PID” column displays a program’s current process ID. This identifies the specific instance of the program if the program is running multiple processes.